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There are many reasons to be concerned after President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska last week. It starts with the U.S. president eagerly clapping and rolling out a red carpet for a brutal dictator and accused war criminal who ruthlessly invaded Ukraine in hopes of rebuilding a Soviet empire through force.
While Trump’s quick adoption of Putin’s stance against a ceasefire and for Ukraine to cede land to Russia is certainly problematic, there are reasons for worry here in the U.S., too.
Just a day after Trump said he and Putin talked about the supposed problems with mail-in voting in the U.S., Trump said he would soon sign an executive order getting rid of mail-in ballots. Elections in Russia, of course, are anything but open and fair. They are rigged to ensure Putin stays in power.
Trump announced the supposed forthcoming order Monday in a long social media post that Steve Benen of MSNBC said was “remarkable in its inanity.”
Trump also vaguely threatened to get rid of voting machines. He continues to falsely claim that rigged voting machines cost him the 2020 election.
Earlier this week, Newsmax agreed to pay $67 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle a defamation lawsuit over the network’s spreading false claims about the company’s machines and the 2020 election. In 2023, Fox agreed to pay nearly $800 million to Dominion for the same thing. Still, Trump persists in spreading lies about voting machines, mail-in ballots and the integrity of elections in America.
In Monday’s social media post, Trump threatened that states “must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them … to.”
Not only does this contradict the U.S. Constitution, it is a huge step toward authoritarianism to suggest that the president can dictate how states run elections.
The U.S. Constitution clearly invests states and Congress, not a president or the federal government in general, with the power to run elections. States have wide latitude in determining when, where and how elections are held.
The Trump administration, with help from Republican allies, are chipping away at that authority.
Trump’s fact-challenged declaration comes as Republicans across the country are working to limit who can vote and to change other election rules and systems. In Maine, a group led by far-right state Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, succeeded in getting a measure on the November ballot that purports to be about requiring a photo ID to vote. While Question 1 would require such identification, the ballot question goes much further, restricting access to and availability of absentee ballots and limiting the number of ballot drop boxes, in addition to requiring new, cumbersome oversight of elections.
Trump’s screed makes it clear that restricting who votes in hopes of bolstering Republicans, not election integrity, is the goal of such measures.
Republicans have long claimed that such changes are needed to curb voter fraud. But analysis by their own supporters shows that election fraud is extremely rare. In an analysis of elections from 1982 to 2005, the Heritage Foundation, an architect of the Project 2025 blueprint for the Trump administration, found two instances of voter fraud. Two.
In addition to lying about fraud, Trump also lied about mail-in ballots, claiming that the U.S. is the only country in the world that uses them. This is not true. According to the International Institute for Democracy & Electoral Assistance, 34 countries allow postal voting. Among the countries that use mail-in ballots are Canada, Australia and Germany, not exactly radical left-wing countries.
In the U.S. mail-in and absentee ballots are used by members of the military, merchant mariners, people with disabilities and others who are unable to get to a polling place on Election Day. There is no reason to restrict their, or any American’s, right to vote. Despite what a Russian dictator says.
